Siobhan Finneran on taking the lead in Protection – and memories of Happy Valley

It’s such a lovely moment: the relaxed warmth between the two women and the sense of comfort that radiates from this most ordinary of routines. Is it too much to hope that some of that quality might permeate this interview with Finneran? She is an actor, after all, and in real life could turn out to be an entitled, pretentious diva, far from the approachable and down-to-earth character she plays in some of her most notable parts – even her smaller roles, such as the caring chaplain in Jimmy McGovern’s Time prison series, are memorably touching.

But nothing could be further from the case. Phew. We’re here to talk about her new ITV drama, Protection, and start off in the jaunty spirit in which we finish. I have some minor tech issues with the Zoom camera and she could hardly be more understanding. Perhaps it’s an age thing – she’s 59 and I’m a decade older. “I can’t use my laptop, so I’m always delighted when it looks like someone else is struggling,” she says softly, but with a hard northern clang on the final g. As the camera reveals my backdrop, she says, “Is that your kitchen? It’s beautiful.” She is in the living room of “my fella’s flat” – her fella being the latest detective in Death in Paradise, Don Gilet.

Finneran has a great range. She was, for instance, intriguing as the sour and conniving maid Sarah O’Brien in Downton Abbey. Then in 2014 came her peach of a role as Clare in Happy Valley – “When you get sent a script like that…”

There had been a number of projects with Wainwright before, as well as with producer Nicola Shindler. “I remember reading the opening scene with Sarah in the playground reacting to a guy who was on top of a swing or a slide or whatever, threatening to set himself on fire. She leaves him, goes into a shop, buys a pair of cheap sunglasses, comes back and from just that scene alone I thought, ‘This is absolutely fantastic!’”

She phoned her agent the next day. “It’s genius because you already love this woman [Catherine Cawood] because of her humour and the way she’s dealing with the situation, so whatever journey she’s about to go on, you want to go with her. You’ve bought your ticket and you’re on the bus.”

And so to her new series, Protection, which sheds a light on the lives of witness protection officers who work – often undercover – in a special branch of the police that is firewalled from other departments. Even the smallest leak of information, we are instructed at the start of the show, could jeopardise witness safety. And in the first episode – indeed, in the first ten minutes – it looks like Finneran’s Detective Inspector Liz Nyles has been responsible for a fatal breach of trust, even if inadvertently.

This is Finneran’s first time as the lead, right? “I think it might be, but I never think in those terms… I don’t put any store with that.”

Her character is one of those plucky but embattled women that she plays so well – a single mum with a teenage daughter, a serious job, from a policing family, whose dad is unwell. Nyles has always gritted her teeth and held it all together.

But now things are falling apart, on the back of her uncharacteristically seizing some pleasure for herself – a secret affair with a married junior colleague who may have compromised the integrity of her unit – and all is unravelling.

When she’s acting in or watching a lot of gritty drama, does she sometimes yearn for something lighter, funny or romantic? “During lockdown, we rinsed every kind of Scandi thing there was – we couldn’t get enough of it. But you do reach the point of absolute overload and think, ‘I need to watch somebody painting a wall, or planting stuff.’ Not that I watch gardening shows.

“And I can think, ‘I don’t want to have to do another angst-ridden, traumatised person’ – I’ve done a chunk of that. I would really like to play someone who’s having a lovely time. I was very lucky because at the end of shooting Protection,

I went and did the second series of Alma’s Not Normal, which was absolutely just like a soothing balm.” When I confess to not having seen Sophie Willan’s comedy series she says, with sweet enthusiasm, “Please will you watch it? It’s one of the most beautiful TV series ever.” (Later, I do watch it and it is brilliant and funny and weirdly heartwarming, with her playing Alma’s hopeless drug-addict mum, Lin, “the Iggy Pop of the Psych Ward”.)

I mention my love of the sitcom Benidorm – in which she starred for six of its 10 series.

The show, set in the all-inclusive Solana resort, was adored by millions – it was regularly voted best comedy programme by the audience at the National Television Awards – as much as it was derided by the critics.

“Well, that will remain probably to the day I die as one of those jobs...” she pauses, with a great nostalgic sigh. “We used to pinch ourselves a little bit, the original cast – we’re still very much in touch and in love with each other.”

The previous week, in fact, she went to see her Benidorm co-star Steve Pemberton in Inside No 9 Stage/Fright, the sold-out spin-off from his long-running but now ended TV series with Reece Shearsmith. Would she recommend it? “Yes, I would, darling. It’s a proper treat night out at the theatre.”

She tells me about an embarrassing point in the play, “where I was obviously so invested, that I got nearly hysterical at a very quiet moment – I had one of those nervous laughs [she does a big gaspy eruption] that you think everyone else is going to do, and you realise it’s only you that’s done it. You know, because you are so into it. And that, for me, is the joy of theatre – because if they’ve got you and you’re with them, you are on your own and they are doing it just for you. Beautiful".

In 1978, when Finneran was 12, her maternal grandmother took her to the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon, where Glenda Jackson was playing the Egyptian queen in Antony and Cleopatra, directed by the legendary Peter Brook.

What does she remember about the play? “Very, very little, darling. I really can’t, sadly. I remember going on the train with my grandma to Stratford, having really nice fish and chips and a cake, and going to the theatre.

“The only play I can remember – I don’t know which one it was – is one where somebody came on nude and my grandma covered my eyes. We’re talking about the 1970s, so the RSC could have been doing anything in the nude then. They could have been doing As You Like It in the nude.”

Finneran and her brother only met her paternal grandmother once, when her father took the family back to his home in Ireland; she died when Finneran was seven. Her mother was a primary school teacher and her father still drives a cab, having done lots of different jobs before. “At one point he taught and worked for the Catholic Rescue Society in their homes for ‘bad lads’ – but they weren’t bad lads. They were kids who maybe didn’t have parents to bring them up and they’d got themselves into a bit of trouble.”

Her favourite family times growing up were going to the seaside with her aunt and uncle, who used to rent a caravan in Rhyl, where they would play for hours on the beach. “And my kids [she has two children with her ex-husband, actor Mark Jordon – Joseph, 27, and Poppy, 25] loved being on the beach when they were little. I once went to a festival in a camper van with them and that was great fun, too.”

What was her childhood in Oldham like? “I have to correct this, because it’s always written that I was born in Oldham, but I was born in Manchester.” It’s important to her to get this right. “And I was brought up in Manchester for the first few years of my life. My mum’s of Irish and Scottish descent, but she was born in Salford and her family are Mancunians.”

It was only when Finneran was six that her parents moved to Saddleworth, just outside Oldham. “We’re famous for the Moors murders, unfortunately, but it’s a very beautiful place.”

Would she describe herself as a country girl? “Yes, darling, that’s the best way to put it – not a city girl at all. I do know Manchester very well because it’s where I was born, but I was brought up in the countryside, really.”

Can she do Northern Soul dancing? The question comes on the back of my reading that she likes to go to live gigs and went to one in February by a band called Thee Sacred Souls that she’d heard on the radio, who have a bit of an old Northern Soul sound.

“I wish I could, darling. It’s hard.” She says that she did have to learn some moves for a part in a BBC sitcom called The Other One, with one of the episodes involving a Northern Soul club night, and she remembers a wonderful teacher: “We learnt literally a couple of steps, pouring in sweat… But I would love to be able to do it because I was far too young to have learnt it at the time.” Does she go out dancing with Gilet? “We would do, given the opportunity. It would be great if we could both learn to do Northern Soul together.”

I ask if we can have a few more minutes. “No worries, darling. As long as you don’t mind me doing this [vaping] every now and then.” Oh, were you a big smoker before? If so, how many? “As many as I could. Little rollies with liquorice papers.”

I finish by asking if she has any unusual or surprising hobbies. “Oh my God, noooo,” drawn out magnificently. “I’m so boring! Wouldn’t it be great if I said that I knitted characters that I’d played! But I don’t do anything that exciting. My mum did buy me some Lego for Christmas and I’m delighted with that. You can make bunches of flowers out of Lego now!”

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Protection starts at 9pm on Sunday 16th March on ITV1 and ITVX. Episode 2 airs at 9pm on Monday 17th March on ITV1 and ITVX.

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